The Holodomor and its historical context
The Holodomor was the result of acts of omission and commission by the Soviet authorities. Not only was no relief provided for those starving to death, but measures were intentionally taken that were guaranteed to increase the death toll even further. The result was millions of deaths, constituting perhaps 20-30% of the ethnic Ukrainian population in the countryside. These deaths occurred over an extremely short period of time, with excess death rates into the tens of thousands per day at the famine's peak, making the impact even more horrific.
It is hard to overstate the importance that agriculture had in traditional Ukrainian society. Ukraine is at the eastern end of the extraordinarily fertile chornozem ("black earth" or "black soil") belt that stretches across Eurasia. For untold centuries, Ukrainians had lived in a society that was deeply linked to that land and to the cycles of nature.
Collectivization, the Holodomor, and related anti-Ukrainian policies in the 1930s were a direct, frontal assault on those age-old traditions and institutions. They made obsolete vast swaths of traditional occupations and crafts, such as icon painters and itinerant musicians. It eliminated or severely restricted ancient cultural traditions, like weddings or winter, spring, and harvest season customs, which had associated with them vast numbers of rituals, songs, and practices. The catastrophic impact that this had on the countryside was yet another aspect of the genocidal nature of the Holodomor era that went far beyond the actual famine.
Understanding the Holodomor requires not just a study of the famine, but also a broader look at the period and the history that immediately preceded it.
